Chapter 1

Before starting this class, I thought that Psychology was just the study of the mind. However, I never really thought about what it entailed. Now that I've read through Chapter 1, it got me thinking. How do our minds work in specific ways? How do we get to be the people we are? Why do we function the way we do? What would happen if we were all alike? It made me think more in depth as to why psychology is so important, and what life would be without the concept.

I have now realized that Psychology affects my life more than I would have ever thought. For example, hindsight. I can't tell you how many times I've looked back on something saying, "oh I shouldn't have bought that!" or, "oops, I totally forgot all about it!" A time traveling machine would be nice at times like these, but you have to face reality and even if you tell everyone "you knew it all along" that you actually goofed up. Another example the book gave was that humans tend to be overconfident, which is also true, but something yet again we hate to admit. As for the three components of scientific attitude, they take place in my everyday life-curiosity, skeptcism, and humility.

One thing that I learned is the three research methods explained to us in Chapter 1 (descriptive, correlational, and experimental). When I think research, I automatically think, just go on the Internet and Google it. However, I learned ways that you can actually conduct reserach. Descriptive observes and records behavior, correlational detects naturally ocurring relationships, and experimental is set up to explore cause and effect.

Another thing I have learned this chapter is the way we humans perceive order in random events. We are always trying to find a pattern in random data, even though it will always remain random! Flipping a coin for example. You would normally think if you would flip it six times, that 50% would end up heads, and the other 50% would be tails. However, it's the same likelihood that it could be 4 heads and 2 tails, or vice versa, and so on.